In the United States Court of Federal Claims No. 19-1805C Filed Under Seal: October 16, 2020 Reissued: October 26, 2020 SAVANTAGE FINANCIAL SERVICES, INC., Keywords: Pre-Award Bid Protest; Cross-Motions for Plaintiff, Judgment on the Administrative Record; RCFC v. 52.1; Motion to Dismiss; Competition in Contracting UNITED STATES, Act; Unduly Restrictive Requirements; Prejudice Defendant. Stephen M. Ryan, McDermott Will & Emery LLP, Washington, D.C., for the plaintiff, with whom was Llewelyn M. Engel, McDermott Will & Emery LLP, Washington, D.C., of counsel. William J. Grimaldi, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for the defendant, with whom were Rose J. Anderson, Deputy Associate General Counsel; Charlene T. Storino, Assistant General Counsel; Christine C. Fontenelle and Pavan Mehrotra, Attorney Advisors, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, D.C., of counsel. MEMORANDUM OPINION HERTLING, Judge Before the Court is the latest chapter in a dispute dating back to 2007 between the plaintiff and the defendant over the effort to modernize the financial-management systems of the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”). This case presents a pre-award bid protest by Savantage Financial Services, Inc. (“Savantage”) of the procurement by DHS of integrated financial-, asset-, and procurement-management software. The plaintiff alleges that the defendant, the United States, through DHS, has acted illegally in two respects in the solicitation for the current iteration of the procurement. First, the plaintiff claims that DHS acted arbitrarily and capriciously in procuring software licenses and Pursuant to the protective order in this case, the Court initially filed this opinion under seal for the parties to propose redactions of confidential or proprietary information. The resulting redactions appear as asterisks enclosed in brackets, e.g., “[***].” The Court also corrected a typographical error. software-implementation services in separate solicitations. Second, Savantage claims that the requirement that offerors demonstrate prior or current implementation experience of their software at a federal agency supporting at least 6,500 users unduly restricts competition in violation of the Competition in Contracting Act (“CICA”), 41 U.S.C. § 253. The plaintiff also argues that DHS prohibited Savantage from gaining the requisite implementation experience by refusing to allow Savantage to implement integrations to or interfaces with the financial- management software Savantage already provides to DHS components. Reviewing the challenged provisions of the Request for Proposal under the applicable standards, the Court finds that it is constrained to reject Savantage’s protest. Accordingly, the Court denies the plaintiff’s motion for judgment on the administrative record, denies the defendant’s motion to dismiss, and grants the defendant’s cross-motion for judgment on the administrative record. I. BACKGROUND A. DHS’s Financial-Management-System Modernization Efforts and Prior Litigation Between Savantage and DHS In 2002, 22 federal agencies were merged to create DHS. At the time of the merger, each of DHS’s constituent agencies had pre-existing contracts for financial-management software from a variety of vendors. These components, employing software upgrades and technology infusion to keep their systems current, continued to utilize software licenses and services under their prior contracts following the creation of DHS. As a result, after several ...
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